Fripp and Eno

No Pussyfooting Around

From Hit
Parader, probably in 1974, by Scott Cohen. From the Jeffrey Morgan
Archive.

You think you know what goes
on, but you dont. You go on. Everyone thought British rock
band King Crimson would go on forever, but after five years and eight
albums Robert Fripp, a.k.a. King Crimson, has abdicated. It was
just time for King Crimson to come to an end, Fripp explained as
he set out for newer realms.

Robert Fripp is too intellectual and
philosophical to just do anything. When pressed, Fripp
reveals three more complete reasons for the break-up.

First, it represents a change in
the world. Its a transition from what you might call the old world
which is now dead into the new world which is nascent. In the new world
the characteristic unit will be small, highly mobile, independent and
intelligent.

Fripp goes on. Whereas once King
Crimson was for the best liberal education I could conceive of for a
young man, it is no longer the case. I have found something far more
useful.

And thirdly, the energies that are
involved in the lifestyle of the band are no longer right for the way I
want to live.

Fripp gave Atlantic Records
as an example of old world politics and pure communism as an
example of the new world. Hammond organs and batteries of
synthesizers are examples of old world instruments and bamboo
flutes are new world instruments. Howard Hughes and Nixon
are old world people and new world people are anyone who decides
to become that. Emerson, Lake and Palmer is an example
of old world music and an example of new world music is Fripp and
Eno.

Robert Fripp, a small mobile
intellectual who looks more like an economics student (which he was)
than a rock musician, met another small, mobile intellectual named Eno,
formerly of Roxy Music and recently voted fourth best instrumentalist in
the world. Fripp met Brian Eno through Bryan Ferry, who had once
auditioned for the lead vocal spot in King Crimson. It was more than
natural that Fripp, whose first love is the electric guitar, and Eno,
whose is the tape recorder, the only instrument I can handle
really well, should meet, form a duo and record a very innovative
album called No Pussyfooting.

Robert Fripps manner makes you
hesitate to call him Bob. He is short, stocky and bearded. Wearing
wirerim glasses, he looks like a real estate broker, a profession he
once seriously considered. Eno, whom no one ever calls Brian, is small
and delicate with thinning blond hair. In contrast to Fripp, who is
solid and earthbound, Eno is vaporous and other-worldly, looking as if
at any moment he were about to disappear. Enos etherealness makes
Fripp look less a pip than he would otherwise. Their minds, however,
mesh so tightly that you wonder how their bodies can be so different.

Fripp and Eno are men of ideas who can
talk incessantly about practically anything. Both like the idea of
deliberately using musicians who arent compatible with one
another. By doing that, Eno explains, you create new
frictions. I work from the proposition that the characteristic of art is
disorder, not order.

Both look towards fashion and slang.
Eno points out that they are incredibly fast barometers of the rate of
cultural change. Fripps favorite slang word is boogalooga,
a word he developed a s a non-specific utterance that one
could utter with some enthusiasm or write at the bottom of letters when
other forms of address may be too specific or too impersonal or too
personal.

Another Fripp favorite is walnut,
which describes the state of ones scrotum when it contracts,
like when you come out of a sauna and plunge immediately into icy cold
water. In other words, a response which is favorable.

Neither Fripp nor Eno were born with
the qualities which you would expect in a musician. Fripp, who doesnt
sing, played his first song, Jingle Bells, on the guitar
when he was eleven years old, at the time when I was tone deaf and
had no sense or rhythm, or timing.

I asked myself why would a person
who is tone deaf and had no sense of rhythm become a musician,
Fripp recalls, and came to the conclusion that I needed music and
music needed me.

In that sense Fripp is an inspiration
to any aspiring musician lacking natural talent. He, however, still cant
dance, which explains why much of his music is so undanceable.

Never being a good enough musician to
steal from others probably caused me to develop an original style,
Fripp admits. Some of the musicians he was listening to at the time he
formed King Crimson were Bartok, Debussy, Ravel, Hendrix and Clapton.
Today he listens mostly to Bartok, Debussy, Ravel and the sounds
of nature, the nature noises.

Like Fripp, Eno is totally obsessed
with technology and philosophy, systems and theories, but is kinky
enough to come off interesting rather than boring. He produced the
Portsmith Sinfonia, an orchestra whose only requirement is that you come
to four rehearsals; any ability to play an instrument is optional. Part
of the Sinfonias repertoire are such popular classics as Beethovens
Fifth, the 1812 Overture, the William Tell Overture,
the Nutcracker Suite and the Sugar-plum Fairy. The
orchestra plays only the parts everyone knows. Their show stopper Thus
Spake Zarathustra lasts only two minutes.

In addition, Eno has added to his
already incredible tape collection of over two million feet of tape, his
wonderful recording of the United States Air Force Starfighter jet.
Prior to his first Island Records album Here Come The Warm Jets,
he was a member of Roxy Music until he was asked to leave when he
started to get too much attention from f\ns and critics.

No Pussyfooting is the result
of the Fripp-Eno collaboration. The title of the album is not the best
title for the music. The Heavenly Music Corporation on side
one and Swastika Girls on side two arent the best
titles either because neither tells you what the music is really about.
But the album jacket does. On the cover is a color photograph of Fripp
and Eno posing in a cubicle lined with mirrors, The mirrors endlessly
reflect of both similar and varied sounds which are repeated over and
over, creating a mysterious hypnotic drone that goes on into infinity.
The album was recorded with only two tracks, a Gibson Les Paul guitar
with the Fripp Pedalboard and Frizzbox. Eno worked on two modified Revox
A77 tape recorders, with the guitar going through the Revox and into the
other, building up a tape loop effect that sounds like fifty guitars.

Originally Fripp wanted the The
Heavenly Music Corporation, which is perfect for meditating, to be
entitled The Transcendental Music Corporation, but Eno was
afraid people would think they were serious and nix it.

Eno, while walking towards the
studio on the night of the mix, recalls Fripp, saw upon the
pavement a piece of paper from some magazine with the headline Swastika
Girls on it. On it were these naked girls with swastika emblems on
their sleeves. On the back was this maiden in bondage Eno, having
some interest in bondage, thought this appropriate. Since he left side
one to me I left side two to him.

No Pussyfooting came from the
slogan Fripp had written on a piece of paper and planted on the mixer in
the studio the night the record was being recorded. No
Pussyfooting is the best thing Ive ever done, Fripp
remarked triumphantly. Unfortunately the album, which was released in
England almost a year ago, probably wont be released in America
because Atlantic Records fears it wont be supported here.

Will Fripp and Eno tour? Fripp has no
idea. It wouldnt be touring in the normal sense of the word.
It depends upon who wants us and not too many people will.

Considering their intellectual approach
to music, they would be more likely to perform in an art gallery or
museum situation than a concert hall. In a small concert hall or a
large lecture hall, Fripp thinks, with no more than four or
five hundred people.

Outside of touring, both Fripp and Eno
are open to offers for production work, which fits into their definition
of being mobile and independent. Their names are in the phone book and
they welcome callers: Fripp is also available for guitar lessons.

For some time Ive been
pondering the creation of a new guitar technique which will cause a
change in the personality of the person going through the discipline.

In learning technique, the person
will be put under enough stress to force him to develop emotionally and
mentally, and these feelings involved will change his personality.

At the same time Fripp is working at
developing techniques for better living. I asked myself the basic
question, Do you want to live, and as soon as I answered
that the rest came easy. He is working at becoming a small, highly
mobile, independent, intelligent unit, fully prepared for the new world.